Traveling for lengthy periods of time is challenging. Poor sleep schedule. Weird eating habits. Lack of exercise. Drinking until 1am. Combine this with days where you’re traveling to a new city by train every 2-3 days and you’re out of your routine. Wildly. Being in the prime of my life, I can do this because I have zero physical deficiencies, and can power through almost any situation. Had a blast until 1am and need to make an appointment at 9am the next morning. Where do I sign up? Do this for 12 days in a row and your body is pissed. It’s so confused that you’re shitting black and you’re not sure if it’s the black pasta (didn’t know this existed) you ate or you’re ill. Also, the Europeans don’t drink water so you’re constantly dehydrated. What I’m getting at is it’s nice to be back.
To have settled days of a work routine, followed by meals at scheduled times, and then exercise, followed by sleep in my own bed was needed or else I would have destructed. That was about the max amount of time I could travel without falling into physical depression. Hotel living is nice for a bit, but you start to feel like a traveler without a home. You don’t have the keyboard to blog on. I don’t stream Netflix. I can’t drink my Glacier Freeze Gatorade. These simple conveniences create a bit of havoc when you don’t have them.
Overseas traveling is hard. I had a train to from Essen to Munich and the train didn’t even start because there was a suicide on the track and it was cancelled. So now you have hundreds of people scrambling on other trains which PACKS them all. I was with a German guy who would point to a seat and say, “sit there”. This is because their seats are reserved, so you can’t sit in the wrong seat. Some seats are reserved between different stops too, so you have to be keen to when it is and isn’t depending where you are on the track. Imagine going up to a German butch, lesbian, who has her laptop out in the aisle seat and telling her you want to sit in the window seat in English. She was pissed. Now do this type of movement for 4 trains because none are direct and you get how challenging these situations can be.
I’ve gotten good at dealing with them because I don’t give a shit. You have to not give a shit. It’s important to traveling. At the end, you will arrive somewhere, at some time, and you can’t get upset if it doesn’t go to plan. If you do, you’re not a good traveling companion. There’s nothing worse than dealing with the tension of why someone is pissed for some reason, and it’s partly why I enjoy traveling alone. I don’t upset myself.
Which brings me back to the stress that occurs when you put your body through this, both mentally and physically. You don’t recover from that overnight. It will take me a few days being back home getting accustomed to normalcy to start feeling “right” again. I don’t regret taxing my body to experience what I did, but you need to be determined to recover from that experience, and not say “fuck it”, I’m fine with getting out of shape and over eating. I share this because my trip is unique. I did 4 European countries in 12 days. I walked 100x more steps than an average human for days. My dad wouldn’t be able to do my trip physically. It’s not within a normal human’s scope of “fun”. To me, it’s what life is all about. Experiencing as much as possible within the time frame.
Also, apparently my best time I’m available to blog is between 3 and 5 in the morning. I’m churning these out with 3 posts in 2 days.
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